


Sleepless Nights

by ObsidianFire



Series: Marian Ryder and Liam Kosta: Tales from a New Time [1]
Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: F/M, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Swallowing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 03:41:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15572955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObsidianFire/pseuds/ObsidianFire
Summary: Marian Ryder has some trouble sleeping, and tries to take her mind off her troubles.





	Sleepless Nights

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not entirely happy with some of the transitions here, but its late at night and I wanted to get this brain child out in the open for consumption before I change all of it! Enjoy! :)

Turning over for the umpteenth time that night, Marian Ryder finally admits to herself that sleep is way out of the question tonight. Looking up above her at Andromeda swirling by isn’t helping any. All it does is remind her of the fall into the vacuum of space back on Habitat 7. Since that day, falling and fighting and watching her father die, she hasn’t been able to sleep well even on the best nights.

Quite honestly, the only time she’s slept well since waking out of that god forsaken cryo pod was the night after her tryst with Liam on that damn couch of his, spring in her back and all. She had walked away feeling sated and exhausted, forgetting that the touch of another human being could be that comforting. It had been a little over a week since then, and she had yet to have the opportunity to go back and talk to him. Pathfinder business, among other things. 

“What a load of crap,” Marian mutters to herself. As if anything she had done had really been an emergency. She felt more like a puppet than a leader these days, really ever since she woke up, and it was interfering in the way she would usually act in the situation. Where once she would have been quipping jokes at Liam from the minute they were done, in front of anyone and everyone, she was now stuck avoiding him and the conversation that probably needed to happen in a way that made her uncomfortable. Luckily, he wasn’t usually on her ground team. He was too much of a distraction, too funny and kind and god how his ass moved in his pants. The times she had him with her when she first took command were almost detrimental, seeing him charge on ahead and watching his back in her sniper’s scope. He moved with such fluid grace that it wasn’t fair, to her or anyone else. It was as if his whole body was silk, flowing and moving and filling in or covering right where he was needed. 

Frankly, she could attest firsthand to the fact that his skin was as soft as the fabric that she thought of him as. Catching her lower lip in her teeth, she thinks back on uncovering that honeyed sable skin for the first (and only) time. Eyes closed, her own hand begins a slow descent down her body, following the track that Liam’s hand takes in her memories. Marian thinks over her own actions, stripping down and laying back on that 600-year-old musty couch, losing herself in the touch of the gorgeous man above her. Her whole body heats, flushing her skin and forming a dew over her forehead.

In the present, as her fingertips reach towards her center, the hamster in the corner of the room lets out a quite frankly monstrous squeak for its size, and the spell is broken. Her eyes fly open, searching for danger, and instead land on the open stars above her. Frozen by momentary panic, like the window has opened up above her, Marian feels like she might stop breathing. It takes SAM’s intonation of “Pathfinder, you are in your quarters on the Tempest. Your heartrate is approaching a dangerous level. Should I wake Dr. T’Perro?” to snap her out of the state her body is in.

“No, SAM, I’m alright. Don’t wake Lexi. What time is it, anyway?” 

“It is 0330, Pathfinder.”

Marian groans, flipping a spare pillow over her face. Now not only is she tired, on a bone deep level, she’s also panicked and horny. Not a good combination. She sits up in bed, the lights automatically brightening to a soft glow at the motion, and asks her next question towards the general vicinity of SAM’s terminal on her desk.

“Is there anyone down in cargo hold?”

“No, Pathfinder.”

Saying a quick thank-you in response, she heaves herself up out of bed to get dressed in something other than her beat-up tee shirt and underwear. Opting instead for spandex leggings, sports bra, and tank top, she shuffles into her sneakers, grabs her water and her headphones, and makes her way quietly past the crew quarters and the med bay to get down to the cargo hold. 

After taking a quick look around, ensuring that no one will be bothered by her late-night (or early morning, really, at this point) expulsion of energy, Marian heads over to the punching bag that Vetra managed to snag on their last stop in Kadara. She was increasingly grateful that the wonderful turian had managed to scrounge up some decent gym equipment for the crew, what with how long they were often away from ports and in transit, because they all needed a means to calm down and work through problems that didn’t involve going at each other’s throats. 

She comes to a stop next to the bag, setting down her water and headphones on a nearby crate that had yet to be unpacked, and takes down the band holding her dark curls in their precarious bun. Flipping her head upside-down, she begins the process of gathering it all before straightening up again and placing it back into a messy bun on the top of her head. Snagging the red headphones, she places them over her ears and quietly says “SAM? Can you play something…fast?” SAM is all too quick to oblige, starting her music up and then quietly fizzling into private mode in the back of her mind, knowing that Marian usually likes to be alone in her head during these activities. Well, as alone as she ever really can be these days. 

Stretching her arms to the sides, and then up and behind her shoulder blades, Marian released an exhale she hadn’t known she was holding. It was cathartic, to move like this with no stress or hurry, and she reveled in the feeling as she released the position to hinge over at her waist and reach down to the floor. It was something she had always loved, since her times on Earth playing volleyball as a teenager, to be able to slowly release tension in a way that only made her stronger the more she went at it. Reaching her arms out to step them along the floor, Marian lowered into a planking position. Her mind flashed to Liam once again, to watching him vent out his frustrations about joining the galaxy in a position similar to the one she was currently in, and then quickly to him in the same position above her, naked, hard, and lining his cock up to her core. She quickly dropped the position, flattening to the floor, and then rolled over and sat up to physically shake the image out of her mind. Not the time, Marian, she chastised herself. 

She finished her stretches quickly from there, knowing that the sooner she really got moving the sooner she would stop thinking so much about the reason she was down here in the middle of the night in the first place. Entranced in her stretches, Marian did not notice the door opening to the side of her, and the dark owlish eyes blinking away sleep only to regress back into the storage closet after watching her move closer to the bag, oblivious to the intrusion to her private time. 

Submerged fully in her thoughts, her music a steady beating rhythm behind her movements, she starts hitting the bag. Slow punches and kicks, moving up in intensity as she got more and more lost in the dance she wove with herself. 

A while later, she stepped back, bending over and placing her hands on her knees after a rather lethal spinning kick that left the bag shaking loudly. Marian removed her headphones from one ear to look around again, determining that she had not woken anyone, and asked Sam once again what the time was. His response of “0445” had her groaning. Still slightly too long before she had to be awake today, to do her ‘Pathfinder’-y things of running around as an errand boy to Tann and Addison. Reaching over to grab her water and place her headphones back over her ears, Marian almost misses the low groan coming from her left. She pauses her movements, bottle in hand. Internally, Marian asks SAM to stop her music, and removes her headphones to listen closely for a repeat of the sound. She puts them down on the crate and tips her head toward the door. When she hears the almost-pained noise again, coming from the storage closet, she moves closer and raises her hand to knock and initiate the sequence to open the doors.  
As the noise sounds off one more time, this time accompanied with a low moan of “Ryder…” in Liam’s distinctive accent, Marian goes still. She feels her face heat, making her already flushed skin go brighter red, as she realizes what she has heard. 

Was Liam… masturbating? To her?

Momentarily confused, she forgets that the arm holding her omni-tool is still raised, now automatically initiating the sequence that slides open the cargo closet doors seconds later. Yelping quietly, she swings her arm down. Too late. The doors are already open, sounding with a gentle ‘whoosh’ that the figure in the room doesn’t hear. With his back to her, Liam stands at the crate behind his couch, leaning back on it with one hand. His other hand is moving idly in front of himself, a seemingly innocent gesture, but Marian knows. She stands there, transfixed, as another low moan leaves Liam’s mouth. 

She shudders. She really tries not to, but hearing that sound and knowing that he thinks of her in his fantasies is just too much. As much as she wants to back out of the room and let the doors shut, she stands transfixed in her place. Watching his damn arm move back and forth, muscles sliding and stretching. Listening to his heavy sigh as he hits a certain spot, hips jerking forward subtly. Marian stares, clenching and then releasing her fists by her sides, forgetting entirely about the metal bottle she still holds.  
CLANK. ‘Fuck,’ Marian thinks. The same sentiment is loudly exclaimed from deeper in the room as well, as Liam lurches around and drops into a semi-crouch behind the box, hand going from one ever-present weapon to another significantly more lethal one. Liam seems to take a second to register that it’s Marian at the door, also looking a little shocked, before he drops the pistol he grabbed out of reflex and moves both hands down out of sight in front of his body. 

“Ryder! What the hell? You scared the piss out of me!” Liam almost yells it in her direction, moving his arms quickly in front of himself before standing back up and straightening out his shirt to cover his crotch. Looking vaguely flushed, he moves around to stand at the side of the crate. Collecting herself, Marian feels a bit of her old playfulness come back at the embarrassing situation. 

“I don’t think that’s what would have come out, man,” Marian quips back. Internally, she groans. ‘Way to go, making the situation worse,’ she thinks to herself. Liam lets out a startled laugh at her words, skin going a bit darker around his cheeks, and starts stammering. “I-I don’t know what you mean!” 

“Well,” Marian starts as she bends over to pick up her fallen water, “I was working out, and thought I heard a noise coming from over here. I got worried that someone was hurt, or that we had an uninvited guest on the ship again.” She straightens back up, canting her hip to lean against the doorframe and tipping her head back to stare at the ceiling. “Of course, at this time with no one else around, who else was going to check? Especially since SAM said that there was no one down here in the hold.” She looks back down so she can stare Liam in the eyes. “What are you doing awake at this hour, anyways?” 

“Couldn’t sleep. Same as usual. Came down to watch a vid, dozed off until…” Liam’s sentence drifts off, and he shrugs as if to punctuate his words. Skin returning to its normal tone, he meets her gaze almost defensively. “Your punching woke me, that’s all. I just decided to start…cleaning the weapons from the last mission.” He gestures to his right, at the gun oil and rags that were indeed on the crate he was behind. 

“Cleaning, huh? That’s one word for it, I suppose.” Marian smirks at him from her post at the door as he stares back at her defensively. She speaks again, looking down at her nails, as he opens his mouth to retort. “Are we really going to ignore the fact that you were moaning my name, Kosta? Pretend that you weren’t just jacking?” He goes pale as she shifts and steps further into the room, finally letting the door close behind her, sealing them both in. Letting the cocky act drop, Marian looks over at him with wide green eyes. “To be honest, I was there earlier myself, so don’t feel too bad about it.” She puts a little bit of snark back in her voice to say “You should be proud, being part of the reason I can’t sleep,” but keeps her eyes kind. “Same as usual? Were you having nightmares again?” With no reason to berate the man when he’s already embarrassed, she tries to be helpful instead.

“What do you mean, you can’t sleep because of me?” Liam asks, shifting back to rest his weight on one foot and ignoring her question completely. Concern enters his warm brown eyes. 

“Honestly?” 

“Answers for answers, Pathfinder.” 

Marian scowls. “You know I hate being called that. On that note, you could just call me Marian, y’know. Everyone calls Mal ‘Ryder’, not me.” Liam chuckles at the mention of her twin, arms crossing loosely over his chest. “It’s the first honest reaction I’ve gotten all night, so it’s a win. Now, stop avoiding the question.” 

Sighing, Marian leans back on the doors behind her, closing her eyes. “I feel bad, leaving…us…how I have for weeks. And honestly, I wanted to keep it going, but it’s not like I can just walk in here after a week of no communication, horny and sleepless and demanding sex once again, just to leave after a pseudo-conversation about leaving doors open without actually knowing what the fuck I’m doing, only to go running off again across dozens of planets without speaking—“ 

Liam cuts her off. “Whoa, whoa, slow down Ryder. Marian. Mar.” She smiles a bit at the nickname as he continues. “First of all, that’s kind of what an ‘open door’ means—just walk in whenever, for whatever, no questions asked. Second, what makes you think that I would be mad about you coming in here for any of that? Yeah, we haven’t talked but you’ve also been running around doing dirty work for everyone in this galaxy. I’m not offended. In fact, it’s kind of sexy to see you powering around in your armor, taking no shit.” He pauses, letting out a slow breath, and then Marian hears footsteps coming towards her. As he pauses in front of her, Marian jumps at the sudden contact of Liam’s hand on the side of her neck, thumb on the side of her jaw. Eyes flying open, she sees that he is suddenly only a foot away from her, looking at her with intent.

Slowly, he leans his forehead against her own. “Just so you know, I’ve been thinking about it too. Is that why you haven’t come down here at all in a while? Avoiding me?” He lifts his forehead away, and Marian sees the concern in his eyes. She sighs. 

“Maybe? You deserve better than someone who sleeps with you once and then doesn’t speak to you for this long for any reason. Even for an ‘open-door-policy’ situation like this one. I didn’t mean to just add onto your problems and concerns.” Marian looks to the side as she speaks, unable to look in his eyes. Liam scoffs slightly at her words.  
“As if you could ever be a problem for wanting to spend time with me, in any capacity. But, if you need it, you’re forgiven. Clean slate, and all that.” Lips quirking up in a small smile, Marian pulls back a hair. Knowing that her doubts are probably still written on her face, she moves to kiss him gently with a quick “thank you” spoken quietly into the air between them. She startles a bit at the feeling of him deepening the kiss, before relaxing into the warmth emanating off of his body. 

Marian groans at the feeling of Liam picking up the pace of the kiss and moving the hand still on her jaw up and back into her hair, pulling it loose around her scalp but leaving it up in the bun. Tilting her head to the side, she deepens their kiss and surges closer into his body. She feels starved of air, the distinct smell of him—like citrus and plums, with a hint of the gun oil he is so often found using—filling her lungs and clouding any lingering doubts in a thick fog. Opening her hands, water bottle forgotten once again as it drops to the floor with an unheard metal clanking, she slides them across his waist and then up and under his shirt. Moving them up to his abs, she traces small circular lines across the planes of his stomach with her fingers, feeling the muscles clench and twist as he gasps into her mouth. 

Their breathing picks up as he pulls his mouth away from hers, sliding hot lips down across her jaw to her collarbones, bending only slightly to nip and suck on the skin there. Groaning, Marian tips her head back to lean on the door. The metal briefly cools her skin, clearing her head enough to know that she wants to move away from the door, lest someone walks by and hears any noise. She steps into Liam, breaking him away from her skin, and directs him backwards until he is leaning against the crate once again. Her fingers, never having ceased the swirling motions, rise further up his chest until she can remove the shirt over his head and off of him completely. She leans in to kiss him again, almost chaste in comparison, breaking away to speak. “For future reference, this drove me crazy for weeks.” She bent down to kiss his neck, nipping him before moving down a little further to plant a kiss on his chest. “Walking in to talk to you, and never ceasing to find you in here with your shirt off.”

She feels him chuckle under her lips, sounding breathless. “Duly noted. I’ll make sure to just, dunno, burn all my shirts?” She smiles in response, biting him quickly and feeling him jerk under the touch. “Well, I don’t know if I feel like sharing the view with everyone else in Andromeda, so you’d better not. You could do me a favor and burn that awful Blasto one, though. I’d win a few bets with Gil, knock him down a few pegs for beating me at poker.” She moves further down, finally moving to her knees in front of him, and she hears a gasp from above. She’s not quite sure if it’s in arousal or affront, but true to his nature he quips right back. “Never. At this point, it’s a relic. If we ever couldn’t afford repairs for the ship, imagine how much it would get us!” 

Marian laughs as she leans in, leaning her forehead on the bare skin of his lower abdomen. She feels Liam’s hand work its way into her hair again, and she reaches up to take it down out of its bun. He cards his hand through the dark curls as she leans against his stomach, caressing her as she settles there for a few more seconds, enjoying the easy nature they seem to have fallen into. She pulls her head back, his hand finally settling and staying still apart from the small movements of his fingertips scratching slightly. Looking up at him, seeing the humor in his eyes, makes her tease him once again. “I’m sure it’s worth a fortune, stains and all. What’ll we get for it, ten, maybe twenty, credits?”  
He lets out a belly laugh, his eyes softening further. “It’s something, yeah?” 

“Yeah.” She leans back in, kissing one of his hipbones and raising one hand to lean on his thigh. Marian hears his laughter die out softly as he inhales at her touch. She moves her lips and tongue across to the other side, kissing and tasting her way across the planes of his stomach. The hand on his thigh is joined by its pair as she moves them up to hook her fingertips into the top band of his pants, sliding them together to join in the center and pull at the buttons, coming just shy of opening them up. Marian hears a small scuff as Liam’s other hand lands to support him on the crate he is leaning on in order to shift his hips away from it. 

Marian picks up on the unsaid statement, finally undoing the buttons on his pants and slowly sliding both them and his boxers over his ass and down his thighs. With her lips still firmly planted on his hipbones, she moves her hands around to cup his rear. She squeezes slightly, just enough to dig her nails in and scratch, and hears the subsequent moan from above her as his hips jerk forward. She feels the press of his erection into her chest, still trapped where it was left after bringing down his pants, and lets out a small groan of her own. Finally moving her face away from his stomach, she leans back a little and brings her gaze to the newly exposed part of his body. Long and hard, his cock stands in front of her face, and she lets out a small huff of air to blow across the tip. Feeling Liam shudder above her, Marian’s lips twitch into a small smile before she leans forward and kisses  
the soft tip. She moves her head to the side and slides her lips down to the base of his erection. 

His fingers cease their small motions in her hair and grip down harder as she sticks out her tongue and licks her way back up his shaft in one broad stroke. Mouth still open, she flattens her tongue and finally takes him into the wet heat. Liam’s hips jerk forward, pushing him further to the back of her mouth, and she unconsciously digs her nails into his ass before dragging one hand around to balance on the front of his thigh. His hips jerk again shallowly, in the phantom action of fucking her mouth, and she moans against his length and begins to move her head back and forth of her own volition. 

Still bobbing her head, she slides the hand on his thigh up and over his chest, taking pause to feel the panting breath he is taking and the subtle vibrating that comes from the moans he releases every few strokes of her mouth. From there she moves it over to the arm holding him up against the crate, moving down to his hand and tugging it to lace their fingers together. Pulling his cock out of her mouth, she sags back slightly and looks up at him. Seeing his face, mouth open slightly and eyes lidded low, Marian feels a spike of heat make its way through her core at the way he is looking down at her. His expression changes slowly, moving away from pure heat and lust to something more…gentle.  
Feeling suddenly shy at the emotion in his face, she turns to the side to look away from him. His hand moves from the back of her head to her jaw, pulling her face back up. “Hey,’ Liam speaks, voice coarse and gentle all at once. “It’s okay, you know. If it’s too much, you can stop. No hard feelings.” Marian feels a little piece of her chest ache at his kind words, and she shakes her head. “Never.” She pulls the hand on his ass away, taking his fingers and returning them to the back of her head, silently giving him control of the situation. Liam seems to understand, both the command to stop talking and the one to take over the movements, as he gives her one last caring look before hooding his eyes and moving her head close to his cock once again. Marian opens her mouth and takes him into her mouth once again, dropping the hand on her head as she feels him squeeze their fingers together with the other, still intertwined.

He starts moving her head back and forth, gently adding in small thrusts of his hips. Marian groans at the loss of control, which goads Liam into moving harder, picking up his pace and thrusting into her mouth with force. She feels him hit the back of her throat on a particularly hard movement, gagging slightly, only to have him hold her there for a second or two before pulling her off. She gasps for air, feeling a string of spit connecting her lower lip to his cock, as he squeezes her fingers. She squeezes them in return, communicating in this new way that she’s fine, and he dives back in. 

After a few more minutes, the constant press of him into the back of her throat combined with the return of her nails digging into his ass has Liam starting to lose the rhythm of fucking into her mouth. Marian moans and begins to help move her head, going faster as her jaw starts to ache at the pressure his erection sliding in and out. Scratching her nails over his ass and thigh, she moves her hand to gently cup and fondle at his balls. Liam groans out her name above her. Marian feels his hips jerk forward out of sync, once, twice, and then feels a flood of warmth in her mouth as Liam hunches over her head, fingers digging deeper in and pulling at her hair. Swallowing his come, she tips her head back, panting to catch her breath. 

After catching her breath Marian sighs out one long exhale, leaning her head forward to rest once again to the right of Liam’s lower abs. The motion seems to jar him out of the stupor he fell into, and his fingers loosen and swirl around against her scalp. She slowly moves her thumb to rub against the back of his other hand, still twined with hers, in return. They fall into a peaceful silence for a few moments, basking in the afterglow of sex, until she hears a subtle alarm go off in the back of her head. SAM’s usual wake up call, coming in right at 5:30 AM for her to take a shower and grab some breakfast before her shift starts at 6. 

She leans back, pulling away slightly and sighing once again. He opens one eye to squint down at her, seemingly still on the high she just gave him. “Leaving so soon? Before any of the good stuff?” Marian smirks as she rises to her feet and turns to start walking back to the door. “Didn’t I just give you the ‘good stuff’? And yes. Unlike you, I have to be out and ready to go at 0600. Which means I have to go shower and eat. I’d rather not walk out to command smelling like stale sweat, among other things.”  
She turns as she walks so she can face him again, moving backwards as the door slides open, watching his eyes—now both open, gazing at her like a hawk—as he wakes further from the stupor. “Of course, you look like you might need one too now. There are two showerheads, you know….” Marian trails off her sentence as she picks up her bottle from the floor and spins around. She hears scrambling behind her, the obvious noises of Liam closing his pants back up and rushing towards her as she saunters to the gym equipment to grab her headphones. 

“Mar, is that an offer?” Marian smiles at the nickname, and the feeling of Liam’s arm hooking around her waist. She speaks again as they begin to walk in the direction of the crew  
quarters. “It might be, if you joining me means I can stop by and do that more often.”

“Anytime. You know it.” Liam leans in to kiss the side of her head as they reach the door to the bathrooms, and get ready to start another, better, day.


End file.
